Mr. Cian Ó Lionáin:

Senator Hayden asked whether the lead-in time for regulation is too long. She may have been outside the room when I said that Ireland is compressing into three to five years what has taken 15 to 20 years in other jurisdictions. Statutory regulation should be in place by 2016. At a minimum we will need that time to allow for the practical issues of legislative drafting and the preparation of the sector for the regulated future. When we set out on this regulatory path we were very upfront with the sector in stating that we wanted to ensure it was reasonably well prepared for it. Rather than waiting for a big bang in 2016, under the voluntary code we are working with, in particular, larger organisations in the sector to prepare an additional financial chapter to be appended to the code. As I said, the code is very much an evolving document. That would effectively result in a number of approved housing bodies signing up to more rigorous code - it will still be voluntary regulation. If an approved housing body signs up to a code - even if it is voluntary - and then for whatever reason decides to walk away from that, it would not play well with it in terms of financial credibility. We hope that over the duration of the voluntary code external lenders be able to point to a number of organisations which not alone have signed up to the voluntary code but have gone further and publicly committed themselves to standards of excellence and have committed themselves to being monitored or invigilated by the interim regulator.

The Senator mentioned step-in powers that other jurisdictions' regulators have. There seems to be unanimity between the Department, the Minister, the sector and lenders that we need credible step-in powers for a regulator otherwise it will not go anywhere.

The Senator also asked whether local authorities should be able to borrow from the Housing Finance Agency and I am sure my HFA colleagues present will comment on this. In mathematical terms there is no reason but at the moment keeping stuff off the general Government debt picture is critical. In other jurisdictions there are precedents where local authorities can effectively form an organisation to borrow. It may not be an answer at this time, but hopefully as the economy continues to recover, it might emerge as a possibility.

The PRTB will become the RTB from next year. The Minister is very aware that the PRTB has done manfully well to cope with a virtual doubling of its work with a halving of its staffing resources. The PRTB has submitted a staffing application to the Department which we will obviously need to consider along with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform within the overall context of the employment constraints. As a Department, we are very sympathetic to the PRTB case. Sympathy does not fill jobs, but we recognise the PRTB has done a huge amount - to use that horrible phrase - to sweat its assets as far as it can and we are very supportive of it.